Category: Everything else

Here’s a way to do better work. Switch off the feedback for at least a day after you ship.

That space will enable you to get started on the next thing. By the time you start seeing the feedback, you’ll have put your previous work in perspective as well. And, in time, the practice of not seeking feedback and validation for everything you do will enable you to ship more.

All time spent seeking validation is time wasted. The work is done and you don’t control the rest. So, it is best to use the positive momentum from having finished something to start the next thing in earnest.

We generally have to do more before we can do better. After all, with deliberate effort, more will give us the experience and judgment to ship better.

There’s a story about how U2, the Irish Rock band, always described themselves as “arriving.” They believed that the moment they “arrived” as a band would be the moment they became irrelevant. I thought of the “arriving” analogy as I read Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders and his insistence that it is always Day 1 at Amazon. Below are a few of my favorite parts.

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Jeff, what does Day 2 look like?” That’s a question I just got at our most recent all-hands meeting. I’ve been reminding people that it’s Day 1 for a couple of decades. I work in an Amazon building named Day 1, and when I moved buildings, I took the name with me. I spend time thinking about this topic. “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”

There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here’s the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it, and I could give you many such examples.

I’m not against beta testing or surveys. But you, the product or service owner, must understand the customer, have a vision, and love the offering. Then, beta testing and research can help you find your blind spots. A remarkable customer experience starts with heart, intuition, curiosity, play, guts, taste. You won’t find any of it in a survey.

Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.

Use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.

Recognize true misalignment issues early and escalate them immediately. Sometimes teams have different objectives and fundamentally different views. They are not aligned. No amount of discussion, no number of meetings will resolve that deep misalignment.

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Every one of these are courses in management and leadership.

There are many companies that aspire to acting like its “Day 1.” But, few have our trust. Jeff Bezos has been walking the talk since 1997 (It is why I’m confident Amazon will be the world’s first Trillion dollar company). It illustrates That’s why integrity is at the root of trust. You are trusted when you make commitments and keep them.

I find the idea of Day 1 incredibly relevant to my writing here. It is at the heart of the learning mindset that this blog is about. But, every time I have a lapse and forget that, it is nice to be able to turn to Jeff Bezos and be reminded of why it matters.

Thanks Jeff.

The problem they mentioned is not the real problem.

The problems people mention are those that sound acceptable. So, they sound logical and generally “make sense.”

“The price is not right.” Or “I feel this might not be the right time.”

But, if we were to peel the onion to understand the real concerns, they would sound much more emotional and visceral.

“I am worried I will be ashamed of making this decision.” Or, “I fear failure.”

So, when we hear that logical objection, let’s take a moment to parse the emotion behind it. Dealing with the logical objection and reducing the price, for example, will not solve the problem.

Finding a way to help them conquer fear with trust and a willingness to take the leap will.

There are many reasons to be obsessive about always sharing credit with everyone who helped you.

1. You show you care. That’s the essence of leadership.

2. People appreciate it. So, they will want to work with you and care for you. It feels great and it shows up in performance reviews too.

3. You set guardrails against becoming a world class jerk. People aren’t born jerks, they become jerks. And it is hard to think too highly of yourself when you write that thank you email and realize the list of people to thank is longer than you imagine.

Equanimity, as a concept, really fascinated me for the longest time. It wasn’t something I managed at any stage in the first 20 odd years of my life. I simply moved up and down with the flow of life. However, writing every day on this blog gave me a sense of balance and perspective that I’d never managed. So, the time felt right to give equanimity a shot. And, the concept that helped me make progress the most was the idea of the life sine wave.

A sinusoidal or sine wave is a curve with periodic oscillations. While a normal sine wave has periodic oscillations, life’s waves aren’t as periodic. But, they’re just as predictable. Some days are “up” days and other days are “down” days. So, if it is an up day, you know there’s a down day coming and vice versa.

The beauty of understanding and accepting this is that you don’t take either kind of day to heart. You understand that this will pass and all you can do is keep plugging away and doing your best.

That acceptance is the first step toward equanimity.

Every once a while, people ask us for advice. This is a privilege. And, like all privilege, it comes with responsibilities.

1. Take a moment, and think about what you are going to say. This is not the time to improvise or ramble. If you don’t have something thoughtful to say, don’t say it. It is okay to take time to think.

2. State your biases. Every thoughtful receiver will spend thinking about what you said. And, in the process, they’ll begin to parse your biases and understand why you said what you said. Save them that trouble. Contrary to what some might think, biased perspective is actually really useful since yours is one of a few perspectives that the receiver is likely listening to. So much better to acknowledge it and move on.

3. Let this be advice to the other person, not to yourself. This is a key major reason for really dumb advice. Too often, people give advice that is really meant for themselves. They rehash their own mistakes and talk about how they might have avoided them. Or, they project their own experiences without considering the receiver’s path and personality. This is all about the receiver – let’s keep that focus.

And, I’ll end with emphasizing what I started with – advice should only be given when it is asked.

I chanced upon a display of Pulitzer prize winning photography. The collection was generally a collection of images that brought light to human strife in various parts of the world. They told a tale of events that ended up being lethal for millions of humans.

I expected disease, famine and starvation to be lethal. But, I was struck by the most lethal killer of them all – humans. Or, more specifically, “man” – as it nearly always was driven by men.

I know the sample probably wasn’t representative. But, in an age when we’ve solved for issues like disease and hunger at an unprecedented scale, our greatest enemy is ourselves.

Or, perhaps more accurately, the stories we tell ourselves. These stories – of “us” and “them,” of “enemies,” or of the relative perfection of our respective faiths, beliefs and ideologies have been most lethal.

It is easy to brush it away as decisions made by “them.” After all, most of us aren’t on the front lines and aren’t in the rooms that declare war.

But, let that not obscure the fact that we have the power to make an impact. The stories that we tell ourselves, our families and our communities have an effect on our collective consciousness. We can choose to tell stories of oneness or division.

The change needs to start from within.

Do good work. Earn your stripes and gain career credit. Then, use this career credit to get access to better opportunities. Then, repeat the process.

Career advice doesn’t have to be complicated.

When in doubt, simply start with doing good work.